Chapter 2: Literature Survey

This chapter explains the background for this project, and identifies the main research questions and methods to bring clarity and define the projects focus, based on lessons learned from earlier efforts and new anticipations. There is extensive literature in both the medical and engineering spheres related to the aspects of design, manufacture and performance of prosthetic limbs. Literature reviewed includes books, journals, conference extracts, commercial websites and web encyclopedias, videos, patent applications, and existing reports. This chapter encases all basic aspects and concepts that review the current knowledge on this topic; it can be taken as a secondary source.

2.1 Structures and mobility of human arm

Figure 2 Human arm anatomy [Tortora and Derrickson, 2010]

The human is very complex and highly
intricate in its interlinking of all the different
physiological systems including the
musculoskeletal system, the nervous system, 
the circulatory system etc. and it is for this
reason that replicating any action inherit to the
body by an artificial means is very difficult. In
the upper limb the biological component systems that make up the bulk of the material
is dictated by its function (as with everything in
the body), which include manipulation of the
environment. The base structure to which
everything is attached and acts, as the scaffold
of the upper limb is the skeletal system.

The arm consists of three bones: 
Hume